Palestinian photojournalist, star of new Cannes documentary, killed in Gaza
Fatima Hassouna, Palestinian photojournalist, artist and protagonist of a new Cannes-selected documentary, has been killed in an Israeli air strike.
Hassouna died with nine members of her family in a direct strike on their home in Gaza City on April 16th.
Hassouna appears in French-Iranian director Sepideh Farsi’s Put Your Soul On Your Hand And Walk. Only 24 hours after the announcement that the documentary was selected for the parallel Cannes section ACID, Hassouna and her family were killed in the targeted attack.
ACID runs from May 14th to May 23rd alongside the main Cannes festival. Director Farsi told Deadline that she had spoken to Hassouna “a few hours before to tell her that the film was in Cannes and to invite her.”
The artist was interested in attending, but wanted to ensure her safe return to Gaza. “She said, ‘I’ll come, but I have to go back to Gaza. I don’t want to leave Gaza,” said Farsi.
Despite the conflict, her family had much to celebrate in Gaza; one of Hassouna’s sisters was pregnant. Houssana had gotten engaged only a few months before. Farsi reported that she is still trying to find out whether Hassouna’s parents are dead but “for sure” her brothers and sisters are. “It’s so horrible and devastating,” the director lamented.
The Israeli army has reportedly said that they bombed the house because a Hamas officer was inside. Farsi struggles to believe this. “Maybe they targeted her because the film was announced. I don’t know. We’ll never know.”
The organisers of ACID put out a statement expressing the “horror” at this news. “Her smile was as magical as her tenacity: bearing witness, photographing Gaza, distributing food despite bombs, grief, and hunger. Her story reached us, and we rejoiced at each of her appearances to know she was alive; we feared for her.”
According to figures released by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), over 150 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza since the beginning of the war. The bombing and invasion of Gaza began in 2023 in response to Hamas’s October 7th attack on southern Israel.
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